These vignettes of disasters and the discussion of how they were understood and handled illustrate important themes, including those proposed in Table 1.3. We can iterate these themes now, all of which will be explored further in later chapters, and which are located largely in the second column of Table 1.2: the future of disaster and emergency management, rather than its past and present.
The report by the US National Science and Technology Council (2005), Grand Challenges for Disaster Reduction, argues that ‘Communities must break the cycle of destruction and recovery by enhancing their disaster resilience.’ It advocates
having had trouble seeing to the end of hospital wards. People were dying outside as there was no room for them in hospitals. The first indicator of mass deaths was a shortage of coffins and flowers.
The disaster was well documented, and the post-war political and social context was quite different from before the war. For example, Victorian-era governments had been careful not to interfere with what people could do in their own homes. Clean air legislation was passed in the form of the 1954 City of London (Various Powers) Act and the 1956 and 1968 Clean Air Acts. These acts restricted emissions of black smoke and decreed that residents of urban areas and operators of factories must convert to smokeless fuels.
As a result, the episode is often used as an example of an event triggering appropriate response. However, it may be a better example of the opposite.
Governments suspected that smog caused mass deaths for centuries (there was a short-lived attempt to ban coal fires in 1273), and for at least one century the cause–effect link was known. Following the 1952 smog, the government of the day resisted passing legislation for as long as it could, blaming an influenza epidemic for many of the deaths (now discredited; see Bell and Davis, 2001) and trying to link later episodes to smoking. When the legislation was passed, there was a period of many years given for conversions, and it emphasized ‘best practicable means’, rather than specifying ambient conditions. For industry, the result was tall chimneys. It was only gradually enforced following other mass death episodes – for example, in 1957 and in 1962, when about 800 Londoners died as a result of smog. Further improvements have come gradually, in part as a result of the decline of polluting industry within London, and in part driven by the European Commission. The episode and its associated public and professional debates and government action make it a landmark in the environmental health movement.
Source: adapted from Brimblecombe (1987); Bell and Davis (2001); Davis (2002); further information was gleaned from the BBC and UK Met Office websites (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2545747.stm; www.metoffice.
com/education/secondary/students/smog.html)
information, behaviour change and the application of new technologies. The mission of the UN’s International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) promotes a similar mission, although without a technology emphasis: ‘The ISDR aims to build disaster- resilient communities by promoting increased awareness of the importance of disas- ter reduction as an integral part of sustainable development’ (UN–ISDR, 1999).
These and many other statements by political and scientific leaders – often made in the immediate aftermath of a catastrophe – highlight that, for many, disaster reduc- tion will result from the application of technology, as well as the need for increased community awareness as a prelude for improvement. These are important parts of a disaster reduction programme but, like other aspects of resilience, are frequently hindered by the absence of a strategic policy framework to support improved preven- tion, preparedness, response and recovery. We attempt to address the latter need. In doing so, important themes or challenges are as follows:
• Disasters and emergencies are a whole-of-society problem, and thus also a whole- of-government problem, and are especially a joint concern of responsible govern- ment and potentially affected communities. Thus, the ownership of the problem, and participation in response, are wider than often assumed in a traditional preparedness-response approach. Wider ownership of the problem necessitates different policy processes and policy responses, based on different relationships, information and sources of authority. Ownership of, and participation in manag- ing, the problem requires recognition of community vulnerability and resilience, including non-tangible aspects such as spiritual values, non-economic attach- ment to place, cultural assets and continuity, and the informal economy.
• The importance of initial problem framing, including clear identification of proxi- mate versus underlying causes. Put simply, the problem can be construed as:
people are at risk of flooding, and levees and evacuation assistance are needed;
or disadvantaged groups (or rich individuals with political influence) are living in flood-prone areas, and while levees and assistance should be provided, liveli- hoods issues, lack of alternative housing and planning laws should be consid- ered. Community vulnerability and resilience become primary concerns, in local economic and asset terms, as well as aspects such as cultural identity, lay knowl- edge, health, local institutions, etc.
• The inevitability of residual risk and uncertainty. No matter what the quantity and quality of knowledge or the sophistication of policy and management, unex- pected events, human behaviours and complex phenomena will place people and places at risk and confound our presumed understanding. Explicit admission of residual uncertainty in the natural and built environment, government institu- tions and local vulnerabilities reinforces the need for contingency planning, posi- tive redundancies and safety margins, a flexible and adaptive response capacity, and better shared understanding of the circumstances of vulnerability.
• Redundancy. In the past, including some redundancy in our systems may be sound practice not simply for emergency management, but also for enterpris- es operating in the face of uncertainty and with much at stake. Nevertheless, this is seen as inefficient and suboptimal in a commercial world dedicated to being productive. The issue for emergency managers is that a small failure in
any part of such ‘optimized’ systems is likely to amplify through the rest of the system. Charles Perrow (1984) calls these highly sensitive arrangements tightly coupled systems. In rich countries, this is well demonstrated by just-in-time food and energy distribution systems that may be highly vulnerable to disruption.
Conversely, advancing technology means that telecommunication systems may now have built-in redundancy through the parallel use of landlines and mobile phones. Our argument is not for built-in inefficiency, but for consideration of the impacts of failure and the use of ‘fail-safe’ design where appropriate – some of this may come from harnessing informal or community capacity. In this book we apply these ideas to policy and institutions, rather than to the more usual focus on back-up technology and operational capacity.
• Strategic policy development. Emergency management has, understandably, been mainly concerned with dealing with the immediacy of crises: it has been good at management, but not at strategy. Efforts at strategic thinking have often been constrained by long-established standard models and approaches. An issue is that many of the constituents of vulnerability and resilience are found in the organization of daily life, and in the culture and priorities of government and corporations – and are not easily addressed by emergency managers. This sets up the challenge of how strategic policy capacity can be created and implemented.
• The art and craft of policy instrument choice for disaster management requires development in terms of the range of options considered, the basis for their selec- tion and the inclusiveness of the policy formulation process. In addition, policy implementation is often under-attended, particularly in the lull between disaster events, when political and public attention wanders and strategies are starved of resources.
• Long-term learning and purposeful adaptation of response strategies could be greatly improved, again particularly across the attention peaks associated with irregular disaster events. This and the other imperatives above emphasize the importance of the institutional settings defining the ongoing capacities and strate- gies in the disasters and emergency field.
• Multiple aims and values – reducing the impacts and consequences of disaster is a core aim of emergency management agencies; but this aim is usually interpreted in multiple ways and pursued through locally specific political, administrative and legal institutions, consistent with the priorities of these institutions. Priorities may include commercialization of services; development rather than hazard manage- ment; aid intended to buy political influence rather than to assist victims; privi- leging ‘national security’ over other needs; avoiding controversy; detailed auditing and real-time record-keeping; and so on. Some aims and values will not be stated explicitly, but are embedded in organizational culture and include priorities that undermine disaster programmes. Legal frameworks may inhibit decision-making as those responsible consider potential legal liabilities. They may also have budget constraints, although the post-disaster impact surge in expenditure may lead to a local economic boom in some circumstances. The administrative aim may be to reduce expenditure, transferring the risk to the individuals involved or to the private sector. Whether these constraints are real or not, they can limit the space for decisions. Some senior emergency managers argue that perception is reality. Political
and media priorities for the dramatic and immediate, or an individual’s agenda for hero status, can also turn perceptions into reality as far as the emergency manager is concerned and make long-term learning difficult. Explicitly including multiple aims and values in emergency policy and planning is one approach to managing these issues.
Some of these themes and their associated dimensions are addressed within the structure of the book, such as policy instrument choice in Chapter 6. Others, such as community resilience, emerge in a number of chapters. Following the argument that thinking about disasters and emergencies has focused more on management than on policy, Chapter 2 surveys key ideas in policy and institutional studies in terms of their relevance to disasters.
The Nature of Policy and Institutions
Policy and institutions are commonplace terms and complex phenomena that pervade our lives. They are at once terms and phenomena that we live with, construct and change, battle against and have opinions about. The policy processes, programmes and instruments, and the institutional systems through which policies emerge, impact on, and are designed to direct, the behaviour of individuals, households, communities, firms, organizations and societies in order to achieve social goals.
Policies may be well designed or not, and may succeed or not. If society wishes to better understand, avoid, prepare for or cope with emergencies and disasters, then over the long term, this can only be achieved through effective policy processes operating within suitable institutional settings.
Policy and institutions are the subjects of a massive body of theoretical and practical knowledge, inside individuals’ heads, in government organizations and in a wide body of scholarly and professional literature. Individuals, professional and academic societies, public and private organizations, and university departments and programmes focus on policy and institutions. Yet, often such policy knowledge is discounted, and we merely argue using simple opinions about ‘policy’, rather than engage in constructive discourse based on shared understanding.
This chapter presents a summary discussion on the nature of policy and institu- tions. This is not a policy text: the aim is to extract from the general public policy literature key ideas of relevance to disasters. Readers are referred to more detailed sources. The chapter first defines core terms and concepts, then summarizes key ideas. It then places policy in the context of the contemporary political environment, and characterizes emergencies and disasters as policy and institutional problems.
Abrupt and unexpected change – including emergencies and disasters – challenge standard policy processes and policy settings and the ways of thinking that underpin these, throw policy processes and institutions into chaos, devastate lives and commu- nities, and even cause governments to fall. Sometimes, the scale of an event makes this inevitable; sometimes policy systems should have been better prepared. While this chapter focuses on traditional public policy, the poor fit between ‘policy as usual’
and ‘emergencies as exceptions’ is an underlying theme, and will be further explored in Chapter 3 and later chapters.